The Debt Star We're Building

The cold, curt, cruel answer no doubt stung the tens of thousands of Americans who had petitioned the White House to support their idea for a new and important job-creating federal program. But as far as President Barack Obama is concerned, the federal government shant build a Death Star.

Were working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it, Shawcross reminded.

Really?

Consider a widely reprinted lesson in accounting offered a little more than a year ago by Laurie Newsom of the Gainesville Tea Party. Newsom suggested that to better understand the governments spending antics, drop eight zeros from the budget numbers. Newsom cited annual tax revenue of $2,170,000,000,000, a federal budget of $3,820,000,000,000, new debt of $1,650,000,000,000, national debt of $14,271,000,000,000. And budget cuts of $38,500,000,000.

Delete eight zeros and pretend that the national government is just one household. Instead of federal revenue of $2.17 trillion, we have one household bringing in $21,700. But in the same year, its residents are spending $38,200 and adding $16,500 to a credit card with an outstanding balance of $142,710. On the other hand, the family has cut $385 from its spending.

Sound like a very disciplined effort to get the fiscal house in order?

Things that cant continue forever, dont.

Exactly what President Obama warned, back in 2009. Today Im pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office. Adding, I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay, and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.

Right now! Er, back then. But somehow it didnt happen.

And isnt happening today.

The federal government stands $16.4 trillion in debt, three times the debt level inherited by George W. Bush just twelve years ago.

The response? Other than speeches full of bald-faced lies? A Republican House majority, a Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama spending us deeper into these dangerous red-ink depths by more than a trillion dollars every year.